Blog #28: Sexism in the Art World

In art history today, we discussed an issue that I find very very interesting: femanine art and female artists. Apparently there is this sisterhood of artists called the Guerrilla Girls. It's a group of female artists (nobody knows exactly who) but they go around leaving posters meant to address sexism and racism in art, media, politics etc. They pointed out in their statement that in MoMa, 85% of the featured artists were male. And that out of all the nudes featured, only 2% were male.

deemed "homoerotic"

I realized that yes, there is very few popular pieces of the male nude. A female nude is considered art but I honestly can't think of a single male nude that isn't linked to homo/eroticism, relgion or both. Think about it, the most famous male nudes are probably the Davids by Donatello and Michaelangelo. Not only are they religous characters, but both artists are often written off as homosexuals. Even Rodin's Thinker was originally inteded for a sculpted dooryway depicting Dante's Divine Comedy. So it seems that in our culture, any interest in the naked male form is reserved for gay men. Because get this, I'm on a computer in the BSU library, the internet allows me to Google search "female nudes". However, when i tried searching for "male dudes" my searches was blocked, deemed innappropriate. HMMMM !!!

by a male artist (deemed misogynistic)

So I asked my teacher if there were any male artists who are considered feminists. She could only provide me with one name. And when I found an extensive list of "feminist artists" on wikipedia, the only male I could find was Kurt Cobain. I don't honestly don't think this is a matter of there not being any male feminist artists out there. I think there seems to be this agreed notion that you have to be female for your art to ever be taken seriously as feminist. If you haven't noticed yet, my 4 art projects for Art 108 have ALL been linked to the feminine. My first piece was meant to resemble both a cathedral door and a vagina, second piece was a purse, the third was an aborted (female) fetus made from SPAM, and my last one addressed the tension between the sexes.

 by female artist (deemed "edgy")

My classmate Maria, noticed this trend and asked if I thought it might be 'misogynistic', that i was trying to tell women how to think. I can't help but feel that, if I was a girl, that my artwork would be seen as a good thing but since I'm a guy, self-proclaimed feminists will reject it. That I can't have a hand in the message. If a woman makes a sculpture of a vagina...that's pride, but if a man paints a vagina...that's objectifying? I believe that I am the product of being raised in a VERY feminist household, I have a LOT of empathy for women, the empathy I thought they were trying to instill. But if they're not interested in my agreeance with them...well what else can I give them?

Saturday, December 4, 2010 by Amidanah Rohmah · 0